Electron Microscopy - Life Sciences 2nd Prize: Meet the Locals. False coloured SEM image that resembles a colony of strange creatures milling about on a rock face. What the image actually shows is a close up of a ragworm's head. The ragworm is a type of marine worm. Anne Weston, The Francis Crick Institute
Electron Microscopy - Physical Sciences 2nd Prize: Micronphone. This biomimetic form is a self-assembled inorganic structure of barium carbonate that mimics life in fossil form. And at the same time reminds us an old micrometer-scale microphone. The image was acquired with a scanning electron microscope at 1kV in deceleration mode. Lionel Cervera Gontard, University of Cádiz, Spain
Light Microscopy - Life Sciences 2nd Prize: Border Patrol. Inside the brain ventricles, the choroid plexus (right corner)<br>represents the barrier between the body immune system (Macrophages, green round cells) and the brain-specific counterpart (Microglia, green ramified cells in left corner). Immunofluorescent image acquired via Leica laser scanning confocal microscope. Green:Iba1 (Immune cells) Red:Laminin (blood vessels) Blue:DAPI (cell nuclei). Image size: 0.5 x 0.5 mm. Roberto Fiorelli, Barrow Brain Tumor Research Center, Phoenix AZ (USA)
Light Microscopy - Physical Sciences 2nd Prize: Natural growth marks on beryl. Differential interference contrast microscopy technique using a Nikon Eclipse LV100 microscope. Magnification 20x Field of view 0.72mm Jonathan Muyal, Gemological Institute of America
Scanning Probe Microscopy 2nd Prize: Entraped bacteria. This Atomic Force Microscopy image show E. coli cells under a blanket made of Graphene Oxide sheets. This is one of the mechanisms of Graphene Oxide antibacterial activity. Valentina Palmieri, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore

RMS Meetings: Supporting Development and Research

Oct 21 2017

With still plenty of events for microscopists before the year end, The Royal Microscopical Society is pleased to announce the return of its Beginners Competition for early career stage researchers and the opening of its applications list for Summer School placements. For details and registration of all the events listed below please visit www.rms.org.uk or use the contact stated.

RMS Beginners' Competition

This award is designed to offer early career researchers an exciting opportunity to present their work before an audience at a scientific meeting. It is specifically aimed at students, interns, apprentices and faculty staff who may have given no more than two talks outside their home institution. Entrants will be asked to give a short oral presentation (10 minutes) at the 2017 Society of Electron Microscope Technology (SEMT) Meeting on 6 December at the Natural History Museum in London.

The competition winner will be announced at the meeting and will receive a cash prize. Previous winning presentations have ranged from “Multiple Length-Scale Imaging of Biomimetric Hierarchical Mineralized Materials” to “Small gold nanoparticles: potential carriers of therapeutics across the blood-brain barrier”.

To apply to give a short oral presentation, please send a brief abstract to Dr Alex Ball, Secretary of the SEMT a.ball@nhm.com

The Society is also now accepting applications for the RMS Summer Studentships developed for undergraduate students, typically moving into their third or fourth year, to complete a microscopy project during their summer break, providing them with invaluable experience to add to their CV. Previous projects have ranged from developing SEM data capture methodologies, software modelling and 3D printing techniques at the Natural History Museum to using a novel atomic force microscopy measurement tool to investigate the effect of curvature for a promising tool in nanomedicine. Applications, which will close in February 2018, can be submitted online (see under summer studentships).

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2017 RMS Scientific Imaging Competition Winners

Following on from the gallery of Ist prize winners of this year’s RMS Scientific Imaging Competition presented in our last issue (ILM Aug/Sept 2017 Vol 42 Issue), the second place winners are shown below. With over 230 submissions, the competition proved to be both the largest to date and hardest to judge. The final winners were selected from 50 shortlisted images and videos that were on display at mmc2017.